1. Field of Art
This description generally relates to ranking content items, and particularly to ranking content items based on session specific information of a client device.
2. Description of the Related Art
An online system allows its users to connect to and communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create user profiles on the online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Because of the increasing popularity of these types of online systems and the increasing amount of user-specific information maintained by such online systems, an online system provides an ideal forum for individuals or third parties to share different types of content.
Users often view and access content from online systems via mobile devices such as smart phones. If a mobile device has a reliable network connection, then new content is promptly downloaded to the device. However, if the device has a weak network connection, the user may not have access to updated content on the device. Conventional techniques do not provide satisfactory experiences to users with mobile devices with weak network connections because users may run out of new content on their device. Additionally, they may have to manually request and wait for new content to be downloaded. Online systems that provide poor user experience are likely to lose their user base over time.